Frankie Petronio
Email: francesca.petronio@stonybrook.edu
Email for inquiries or to schedule office hours
Research Interests
Trans studies; cultural studies; American studies; critical discourse analysis; parasociality; politics and social movements; political psychology; far-right studies.
Biography
Frankie Petronio is a graduate instructor and PhD Candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. They hold a BA in Psychology and Italian Studies from Smith College, and an MA in Liberal Studies from The CUNY Graduate Center.
Frankie’s work straddles the fields of cultural studies, media studies, and political psychology. They are currently exploring post-gay culture, media and politics through case studies of gay and trans MAGA influencers. Frankie is interested in rearticulating the theory of post-gay within the genealogy of other post ideologies like postmodernism, post-politics, post-racialism and postfeminism to understand how the paradoxical messages about time and space inherent in post ideologies make them ideal for both far-right and neoliberal political projects. Frankie is most interested in how post-gay simultaneously makes space for, and squeezes out, trans as a category, identity and culture war issue.
Frankie has published reviews in Feminist Media Studies and the Journal of Sexuality, Gender & Policy. They recently published a peer-reviewed article for QED’s special issue on the queer 90s, focusing on nostalgia as a reactionary sentiment, and how pivotal gay right-wing figures of the 1990s inform post-gay political discourse in the Trump era. Frankie is currently finishing up a chapter in an edited collection for Routledge UK on the global anti-trans panic, as well as a chapter in an edited collection on television studies and the politics of representation.
Selected Publications
"Gaga for MAGA: Nineties Nostalgia and Gay Reactionary Populism," QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 10, no. 3 (2023): 155-185.
“The post-queer sensibility: A review of Kate McNicholas Smith’s lesbians on television,” Feminist Media Studies, 2023: 1-3.
“Revolutionary genealogies: A review of Erik McDuffie’s Sojourning for Freedom,” Journal of Sexuality, Gender & Policy 2020: 1-4.
Manuscripts in Preparation
“‘I’m Kind of Like the Atlantic, Full of Plastic’: Blaire White and the Affective Politics of Conspiratorial Authenticity,” forthcoming in Routledge UK’s Trans Panic and Anti-Gender Mobilization on the Far Right.
“Just your typical all-American, Catholic, divorcing, disgraced, lawbreaking, gay family”: Nicely Queering the Sitcom with ABC’s The Real O’Neals,” forthcoming in Bloomsbury Press’ Playing Nice: Irony and Sincerity in Television.